by Gwynn White
Victoria was trying to stay as close as possible; her quiet footfalls echoed his from the step behind. His initial optimism as they started the descent had worn off, though he was overjoyed he wasn't doing it alone. He thought he might go insane if he had to try.
And if the light went out?
He looked down at the flashlight, as if to will it to stay on. It was bright and steady. The walk down was nearly as taxing on their legs as the climb up had been, though it was a different kind of pain. Adding to their suffering, they’d had no food or water since the start of the day's adventure.
The staircase wound itself around the machinery of the mechanical tram sharing the space. Rather than one continuous set of stairs, it was broken up with dozens and dozens of landings so it could bend with the curvature of the structure. They expected to find the missing zombie on each landing as they went down. And each vacant landing heightened their anxiety. Was he on the next one? Was he still in the stairwell at all? Was he attacking Grandma at this very moment? Liam's imagination ran wild.
He tried to balance the prudence of a cautious descent with the pressure of escaping the Arch before the whole structure was overrun with the armed attackers swarming below. He wondered whether the mindless infected were worse than the men and women preying on their vulnerable peers.
About twenty minutes later, they reached in the machine shop where they'd started. His stress level was off the charts because the ranger had to be somewhere close. They couldn't have missed him on the stairs. The same door was open that led up the hallway into the main waiting area. The zombie had to have gone through there. It couldn't have been hiding anywhere else.
“How did that thing get past us? Do you think he was hiding?” He didn't figure that was a behavior of a normal zombie, but then, what was the normal behavior of a dead person? Seeing a real life zombie made him realize “normal” and “zombie” could never be used together.
“No, he couldn't—”
They jumped when screaming began. Someone had found him.
But when they entered the main waiting area, they found it wasn't a zombie causing all the commotion; it was the criminals. They had already breached the north entrance, breaking all the glass doors, and were yelling and screaming back and forth with the police officers nearby.
He scanned the room and did see the ranger, after all, going after some of the sick people—sick, normal people—on the right side of the room, nearest the candy store. Well away from the police or the looters. Well away from help. While it was a matter of life or death for those closest to the crazed ranger, the zombie was a sideshow relative to the battle in the rest of the cavernous room.
They were still in the south hallway where it was very dark. He shut off the light and tried to establish some sense to what was happening.
The looters came in from the north, across the room from them, and controlled that entrance and the tunnel leading to the north leg of the Arch. The police were on their left, holed up in the museum. The large waiting area, filled with the elderly and the sick, was between them and both the police and criminals on the far side.
The sight of sick people lying on the floor, and the screams from those now being assaulted by the park ranger seemed to give the looters a reason to pause.
“There's Grandma. I have to get her out.”
Victoria offered no objections.
Grandma was still where they left her very early in the morning. They couldn’t tell her condition, but she was still in her big wheelchair. She was maybe fifty feet from them, but only several feet away from the park ranger and his probing teeth.
He ran out of the darkened hallway, straight for her. A few senior citizens in the middle of the room were making for the south exit. He felt bad to use them as distractions, but they gave him the cover he needed from the criminals on the far side of the room.
Even so, while he was on the run, one of the invaders yelled, “These people are infected! Kill them all to save yourselves!”Screams of fear erupted around him, overlaid with the intense sound of escalating gunfire.
He covered the distance to Grandma across a room full of flying bullets in seconds. She was awake and clutching his backpack as a shield. He said nothing, just grabbed her chair, spun her in the right direction, and started pushing for their lives. The park ranger was nearby but wasn’t the major threat. Not by a wide margin. But he was the only threat to the old man who had come in with them and Father Cahill.
“I'm so sorry.” He knew the man wouldn't hear him.
Most people on this side of the room huddled in fear, and doing a slalom with the wheelchair through the people on the floor made him an intolerably slow-moving target, but he didn't dare try to go up the ramp to the south entrance. He could see people being shot in the back as they went toward that exit.
Instead, he aimed for the same hallway he'd just left. Victoria would still be there—he hoped—and together they could get Grandma to the safety of the maintenance room. As he pushed the wheelchair, he willed himself to be invisible.
A little prayer slipped out as he huffed.
“Please, God, help us.”
Grandma surprised him by praying as well.
“Lord, let us fly.”
As he rolled the chair back across the room, he saw police move out of their space in the museum. The looters were profiled by the light coming in through the north entranceway, and heavy shotgun slugs and bullets from service revolvers forced them to stop shooting the civilians and focus instead on the police.
With one final push around the corner, he was able to take a breath. They had escaped the carnage in the main room. Victoria dropped in behind him and together they ran to the relative safety of the machine shop down the hall. His ears rang after the loud exchanges of gunfire in the hollowed out space.
At the final door to the maintenance room they had to help Grandma from the chair so it could be folded to fit through the doorway then opened on the far side. They closed and locked the door, though he figured it wouldn't last long against bullets if they were discovered.
“I think I left my cane back in that room. Liam, would you mind?”
He was about to ask if she was out of her mind when he realized she was smiling innocently at him. Who knew Grandma had such a dry sense of humor? She had, in fact, left the cane behind, however. He was thankful they still had the chair.
Once they were safely in the room—relatively—he opened his backpack and drew out a water bottle and some grain bars for himself and Victoria. Grandma waited for them to finish before asking what was going on.
“Victoria, let her hear what's on the police radio. That will make it clearer than if we tried to explain.”
After some fiddling with the radio for better reception in its new location, they were shocked to hear a chaotic blast of yelling and cursing coming from it, unlike anything like they expected on a police channel. Through the noise, they picked up some fragments:
“They have moved into the Arch's north entrance. My husband and the boys are trying to hold them off, but we're trapped.”“—the South team has managed to organize citizens, but we have very little cover. Trying to evacuate others south.”
“This is North Gate. We have a new situation here—” a man said, but the other callers soon squelched him.
He felt bad for the police but knew there was nothing he could do to help them. He was trapped in a stainless steel room.
While the chatter continued, he grabbed his gun from his pack and put it back in his waistband holster.
“I'm never taking this off again.”He paused.
“Victoria, do you want my other gun?”
She looked at him in the harsh light of the flashlight and seemed to think about it for a few seconds, but shook her head.
“I appreciate the offer, but I'll be the plucky comic relief.”
“The what?”
“I just don't think I want a gun, Liam, but thanks.”
He tried to give the M
ark I to Grandma, but she said he should just put it back in his backpack for an emergency. She wasn't sure she could even pull the trigger anymore since she was getting weak in her old age. Their appreciation of their chances of surviving this crisis underwhelmed him. He couldn't fathom ever being separated from his gun and didn't understand why anyone would choose to be unarmed. Grandma maybe if she couldn't hold it, but Victoria?
And perhaps the most important realization of the whole exchange was he, Liam, was now wholly responsible for protecting them. One boy with a couple of pop guns against a world gone mad.
You said you wanted to be the hero.
They continued to listen to the radio for another half hour or so. The police in the museum had been able to survive against the infringing looters, but neither side could get the upper hand. The radio chatter was a little unclear, but it sounded like some of the sick and wounded lying in the middle of the waiting area had begun to show signs of reanimation—which was causing havoc on both the police and the looter contingent.
Up top, the battle had gotten very serious. The renegade urban gangs had lots of firepower and were able to push well into the park—up to and including the north leg of the Arch. But from there they weren't able to push farther because the defenders on the rest of the cordon, organized by the captain and his police volunteers, had been able to hold their positions. The looters and gang members also had problems behind them, as the infected had followed them through the breech and were now nipping at their heels. Unable to push into the Arch and unable to get all their members safely inside the cordon, they now found themselves fighting enemies on multiple sides. It made the ones inside the Arch desperate and nearly suicidal. The police admitted they were in serious trouble inside the museum.
By late afternoon, another report from the radio operator called “North Gate” caught their attention.
“This is North Gate again. I'm in direct line-of-sight to thousands of infected pouring into the northern side of the park. As best I can tell, they're being attracted by all the gunfire. There are a few remaining civilians who are hiding in the parking garage or nearer to the river, but the swarm of dead are overwhelming anyone who stands in the way. The gangs pushed many civilians into the path of the zombies, which, in turn, has infected lots of people near your interior lines. You guys should be prepared for this.”
The captain himself replied.
“Thank you, Ben. We owe you one. Hope to see you again so we can laugh about this over a beer. Over.”
“Me too, Cap. I'm OK for right now. But I'm not sure how long I can hang under the bridge without being spotted. Maybe I'll fly away like a bat.” He let out a nervous laugh, which was reciprocated by the captain as they signed off.
The trio listened to the radio for a while longer, expecting at any time to hear the whole park had been run through by the dead. They never heard from the north gate again, but several other stations kept reporting in. Things were not going well for the good guys.
Comms were cleared by a gruff new voice. The radio chatter from the police stopped cold.
“Break, break. This is Raptor HQ actual. We are the blocking force located on the east bank of the Mississippi River. All bridges are under our control. No. I repeat N-O personnel will be allowed to cross the bridges, use boats, or otherwise transit across the water, by order of General Hodges, II Corps, United States Army. We've had several—Shall we call them volunteers?—disobey orders and cross the river to support you. Those men and women won't be allowed back, either. Be advised, I also have orders to terminate the infected now converging on your position. I'll give you all the time I can. Say sixty minutes. Out.”
It appeared the Army could see what was happening too and took this delicate moment to remind everyone in St. Louis they still weren't allowed across the river.
The angry voice of the man who had called for volunteers from the group inside the Arch that morning blared from the radio.
“This is Captain Osborne with the Missouri Highway Patrol. On behalf of all of us laying down our lives to protect these citizens, let me just convey—” and went on to teach Liam a whole host of new curse words and make his ears burn with embarrassment because Grandma was right there listening, too. A glance at her showed no emotion on her face.
His world had been spinning out of control since the sirens turned off two days ago, but now he'd felt as if his rescue parachute was packed with bricks instead of silk.
“No help is coming,” he said, as much to himself as to the others.
It can't get much worse.
“Well, what do we do now? We can't exactly step out of this room and make a run for it.” Victoria was right, but no one had any better ideas. The stairs up the Arch were open, but going back to the top was pointless, and Grandma would never survive such a climb.
Looking around the room, they found various tools, workbenches, and maintenance equipment for servicing the top-to-bottom tramway. No weapons of any kind—not that anyone expected to find guns stashed away in a public piece of property like this.
He was probing the edges of the room when he said, “Hey, look at this grate on the wall. It seems to have a tunnel behind it. I can't see where it might go, though.”
The thick metal grate, about three feet wide by three feet high, had a stout-looking lock on it. The wide latticework made it easy to see down the tunnel. A couple of keys hung on a small hook next to the opening. It wasn't rocket science from there.
He unlocked the grate, swung it sideways on hinges, and dropped the lock nearby. He started to follow the flashlight’s beam into the darkness, but Victoria stopped him.
“I’ll go,” she said. “You need to stay here and protect your grandma.” For a moment he feared Victoria was going to find an exit and run off and leave them. That’s crazy. But so is letting her go in there by herself.
She cut off his protests quickly. “You’re the one with the gun. You’ve got to protect your grandma.” She took the small police flashlight from him and crawled down the concrete duct. After a few feet she disappeared around a turn, and he felt his heart drop. Grandma, as if reading his mind, reached over to squeeze his arm.
There was virtually no light in the room, except the illuminated EXIT sign over the door. He turned on his flashlight and started rooting around, looking for something that might help Grandma get down the tunnel if Victoria came back to tell them they could escape through it.
When she comes back. Not “if.” When.
Grandma, in her chair near the door, said, “I think the shooting is getting closer.”
“I have to find something to get you through this tunnel.”
“Oh, no, I can't possibly go in that tunnel. Just leave me, Liam. Get yourself and Victoria to safety.”
He knew she would say something like that, which is why he was determined to find just the right thing to get her to go with him. Absorbed in his search, he jumped like a scared cat when someone banged on the door. A disheveled man with a horrible tie peered in through the window: Mister Hayes from the group of CDC people.
“Do we let him in?” Grandma asked.
“If we don’t, he's going to alert the whole place to this room.”
He opened the door. As Hayes ran in, they heard a volley of gunshots. He pushed the door shut hurriedly but took care not to let it slam.
Hayes stood hunched over his knees, shaking.
“Shot ... us ... all,” he wheezed.
Just then a small beam of light brightened the darkness in the room. Victoria crawled out of the tunnel. He had to fight down the urge to run and hug her.
“This tunnel leads out. It has another gate on the other end. Hopefully, one of these keys is for its lock. I think the exit is in a railroad tunnel. I could see the tracks with my light.”
“Help me find something to get Grandma through the tunnel.” With Victoria’s help he continued searching the room until he found the “something” he was looking for, hanging on a wall in a far corner. He
grabbed it, adjusted it, and slapped it down in front of her wheelchair.
“It's your lucky day, Grandma. Just lay down on this mechanic's creeper, and I'll pull you to safety.”
She looked at him, then at the creeper, and finally at the hole in the wall. Whether she was calculating her odds of making it through there or maybe just deciding if she really wanted to die in the Gateway to the West, he didn't care. He wasn't going to give her a choice. The sound of escalating gunfire seemed to make up her mind. She stood up, and with Liam and Victoria on each arm she was able to settle onto the creeper.
“Victoria, check the window. Mister Hayes, grab those other keys off the wall and hold Grandma here while I break down her chair.”
Hayes had recovered control of himself, but his hands still shook as he got the keys, and his voice sounded ragged. “Thanks for letting me in. I never thought it would come to this. Why did those men start shooting us? Don't they know we're the good guys?”
Loud cracks of gunshots, seemingly outside the door, cut off the conversation. Everyone made for the tunnel.
He took charge. He finished breaking down the chair and ordered Hayes to go first with the keys and the chair.
“Victoria, do we need two flashlights down there?”
“It'll be fine, there are a few turns, but it's very flat and uniform all the way to the end. It isn't that far.”
Hayes was already working his way into the darkness.
“OK,” he said, “I guess you're going next, Grandma. You ready to roll?”
“I'm not getting any younger!” She loved that one.
As he began pushing her on the creeper, he heard banging on the door again and saw a shadow at the window. Victoria, closest to the entry, dashed for the tunnel just as a face exploded against the glass. Bullets tore through the upper part of the door and ricocheted off the metal of the machinery in the room. He hastened his pushing to give her room to jump in behind him.
